Saturday, August 25, 2012

74,000 Miles, going nowhere fast

The silence has continued, punctuated by a case of vertigo.  Last Tuesday I was eating lunch and felt myself becoming more and more dizzy and nauseous as the meal went on.  I began to suspect food poisoning, and left the office early to hopefully sleep it off.  When I awoke I wasn't nauseous any longer but the dizzyness persisted.  I forced myself to go to a work-related meeting, but I couldn't concentrate and felt more and more out of sorts.  Again, I figured I would sleep it off and all would be well.  On Wednesday morning I forced myself to go to work, but my head was buzzing all morning.  I finally went to the urgent care clinic around lunchtime, where I was swiftly diagnosed with vertigo.  The doctor's instructions were to drink lots of fluids and move as little as possible until I felt better.

For the next two days that's just what I did.  I stayed home, in a quiet house all by myself, as my wife and stepdaughter were away.  I slept a lot.  When I did have to get up I moved very slowly.  And, of course, I had far too much time to think about my job, my life, my kids, and my future.  The more I thought, the worse I felt; the worse I felt, the more I thought, and so on.  I forced myself to go to work on Friday morning just to be out of the house, but I was still too dizzy to be of any use, so I left around noon.  I got home, took a nap and, mercifully, woke up to find that I was no longer dizzy.  And that's when things really took a bad turn. 

In my moment of clarity the silence, loneliness, and isolation, piled on top of my career frustrations, my anger about my situation with my kids, my emptiness at losing my dad, and my general feelings of disappointment with my life, all came crashing down on me.  I sat on the couch in the dark and just felt the weight of my circumstances.  How in the world could I ever put the pieces of my life back together?  Where would I even begin?  I just didn't see any possible way forward for myself.  Though I didn't contemplate ending my life I did find myself wondering how I could go on living.

My wife called to talk to me, but I was too upset and angry to carry on a decent conversation with her, and I lashed out at her attempts to try to offer me any suggestions.  She told me that I should go to the hospital and check into the ER for an evaluation.  I decided to go to sleep and see if one more sunrise would cure my problems.  Sadly, it didn't, and I woke up this morning feeling every bit as freaked out as I did last night.  I finally decided that I need to find out just how bad off I was, so I drove to the local ER.

After waiting more than two hours (what if I had actually been suicidal?) I got a chance to talk to a counselor, who went over my options with me and told me that, if I so desired, I could be admitted to a locked psych ward, but that I would be surrounded by low functioning people, many of whom were psychotic, most of whom had tried to kill themselves in recent days, and all of whom (including me) would be monitored 24-7.  My other options would be a referral to a partial hospitalization program (PHP), which would consist of several consecutive all-day therapy sessions and an appointment with a psychiatrist, or to just ramp up visits with my current therapist and try to get an appointment with a psychiatrist, which could take a month.

I spent the rest of the day in a reverie of sorts, not speaking to or seeing other humans, with the exception of a brief phone call to my kids. Sitting around like this made me increasingly more depressed, but I simply lacked the motivation or self-confidence to do anything else. I have lost faith in my ability to be of any good to anybody, which is what brought me to the ER this morning in the first place. I had decided that I was going to proceed with the PHP.

After more consideration I then came to the conclusion that wallowing in my troubles for seven hours a day for several consecutive days with other miserable--and possibly unstable--people is not what I need.  I'm instead ramping up my therapy sessions and making a new commitment to staying as busy as possible so I can't get stuck in the morass of bad feelings again.  I suppose I've come to grudgingly accept that "fake it till you make it" is the only thing that's going to work for me.

Monday, August 20, 2012

74,000 Miles

My ex-wife had a running joke in her family that dates back to when her oldest brother, who is now 41 years old, procrastinated on a middle school book report and was forced to write a last minute essay about a work of fiction that was so fictional that it didn't even exist.  Amazingly, his act of creative academic malfeasance resulted in him getting an A.  Three years later his younger brother wrote a book report about the same phantom novel and also got an A.  Another three years on, their little sister followed suit with the same results.  The (nonexistent) book in question was called "All is Quiet Now," written by the great (nonexistent) author Estelle Pendleton.

I think of that moment tonight for a variety of reasons:
  • It's a funny story that can't help but stick with me
  • It's a reminder that she actually did once have a close relationship with her siblings
  • It illustrates how far back her ease with telling lies goes
  • It really illustrates how much she and her family have always believed themselves to be smarter than those around them and thumbed their collective noses at authority
  • The author's first name was the same as their grandmother's, who recently passed away
  • It proves that the teachers and schools in their little town have always more than a few books short of a library, both literally and figuratively
  • Most of all, in my house, all is very, very quiet now.
It's been 16 days since I took my kids back to Maine.  Though I was sad to drop them off at the end of six great weeks together it somehow didn't feel quite as awful this time as it did every other time before.  In the past, the car ride from the airport back to my ex-wife's house (as if she would pick them up!) was always a funeral march, with my soul filling with anger and sadness until the tears inevitably sloshed out of me around the time I had to say goodbye to my kids.  This time it was a goodbye party--we joked and laughed all the way.  After kissing them each one last time and bidding them farewell I actually felt at peace, and drove off with a clear mind.

I have to believe that the tighter bond we forged with each other during the summer had at least something to do with the difference in everyone's mood.  My kids had been an integral part of my new life and home for an extended period of time, and they both enjoyed it.  I got to feel like a real parent, and not just a "frequent father," and felt secure in the knowledge that next summer would be the same way.  I wasn't worried about the trip back to Virginia, the two months until I would visit Maine again, or the thousands of miles that I'd be traveling over the next 10.5 months just to maintain a relationship with my kids.  All of my anxieties drifted away in that moment, and smiled as I drove off.

The positive feeling lasted for a few days, as if I had just visited a particularly skilled acupuncturist, and the tingly feling lasted longer than usual.  The intervening two weeks have not been quite so kind.  I came back to my job, which has quickly become tedious and unfulfilling, and I've been having trouble motivating myself to do much of anything.  I took a quick trip to Arizona with my wife, ostensibly for us to have a brief getaway, but really to help my mom and aunt figure out what to do with my 93 year old grandmother, who is rapidly descending into dementia.  My ex's phone went out for two days and, since she refused to get a cell phone, I ended up having to call the cops to do a welfare check (they were fine).  Finally, my wife and stepdaughter have been in Atlanta for the past 10 days--it was supposed to be my stepdaughter's time with her dad but, to nobody's surprise, the bum has only seen her for one afternoon so far.

And, thus, all is quiet now.  I've been largely alone with my thoughts for 10 days.  I work in an office with just one other person and we spend much of our collective day at our respective computers, with little occasion to socialize with each other.  I come home to a dark, empty house and have to motivate myself to do more than slump on the couch.  In between I have forced myself to stay active and busy by playing soccer, riding my bike, and even going to the movies with a high school friend.  All of it has been a largely unsuccessful exercise in not dwelling on my situation and getting on with my life.

I have determined that the only way I'm going to keep going in the right direction is to find a career path that engages and motivates me.  My job is paying the bills, but I come home each night drained and tired, and feeling like I'm just treading water.  If my life at home was in good order, any old job would suffice, and I'd find a way to keep going.  But I need more--if I don't find some meaning in my work I will undoubtedly fall back into a depression. 

There will be many more miles to travel in the coming months.  I am hopeful that I will find my way professionally soon, so that I have the strength and energy that I need to soldier on as the Frequent Father.